Beyond Infinity
by The Sith Virtuoso
Summary: What lies beyond death? What sights await one beyond the veil? The Mad Titan is set for a journey unlike any he has ever had. One-shot. Complete. Set within the events of Avengers: Endgame but not quite. Reviews are always appreciated!


**Author's note: Shoutout to BigHead98 for the idea. I'm sorry it took so long...my job is extremely taxing. This is a bit different from my usual stories, but hopefully I have delivered. -SV**

**All characters property of Marvel Entertainment**

* * *

**BEYOND INFINITY**

_"What did it cost?"_

_"Everything"_

* * *

_It is done. _

"My father is many things," Nebula addressed the horrified group, "A liar is not one of them."

_I cannot be undone._

She had been the least of his favoured children.

The least loved. The least valued.

He could never have guessed that it would end in this way though—he, the savior of the universe, helpless and mutilated by this band of savages desperate for vengeance.

_Do with me as you will._

He would have been enraged, but he had transcended that petty level—what he has decreed, none can ever undo.

His triumph, absolute and unyielding as the laws governing the universe.

The only means of transcending them he had vanquished for good and for all.

_Let me rest._

Still…to hear her speak of him in such a way. If anything the great titan was unfamiliar with, it was remorse.

"Thank you, daughter…" he spoke in a tired, but genuinely grateful voice.

Was this remorse? For what precisely? Did such a question even matter?

"Perhaps I treated you too harshly—"

A lightning flash of steely grey.

The briefest moment of pain.

And then nothing.

* * *

_Thanos…_he heard an unknown voice whisper.

The great titan had long thought of death being a relief. Though none would have believed it, he had been tired for so long.

The dream of a universe grateful and thriving, and the fruition of such a labor…was worth everything.

He knew death would come, sooner or later, and expected nothing to come after.

Yes, he was content to be nothing once the deed was done…where was that voice coming from, he wondered?

He awoke—for lack of better word—in darkness.

But it was not true darkness; not the kind that exists in the absence of light, but an undefined nothingness, the void that was before there was existence.

Was this judgment? Was this what awaited mortals after death?

The forlorn savior raised a hand and was surprised to see it in perfect detail even in the absence of light; he looked down and saw his naked form unblemished and unwounded.

The mangled remains of the Infinity Gauntlet were also absent from his unmaimed hand.

He then became aware that he was lying on his back on what seemed to be a solid surface in that preternatural realm of shadows.

How peculiar it was; and even stranger, he did not feel afraid, though words and reason failed him as to why.

He got up from what served for the ground, scanned his surroundings and saw nothing.

Just the void and he.

_Thanos…_

He turned around, toward the voice that had been whispering his name, for he was sure now that it was not a trick of his mind.

Six writhing lights; red, purple, blue, orange, green and yellow manifested before him.

_Impossible!_

He could live a thousand lifetimes and die a thousand times more yet never would he fail to recognize what they were.

The titan took a step back, feeling true fear for the first time in countless ages, still transfixed at the spectacle that manifested before him. The six lights, at once mesmerizing as they were repulsive, began to trail out into luminescent vapors that began to coalesce.

The scintillating kaleidoscope was at first shapeless—spinning and writhing and contorting into existence until it began to take shape.

A bright flash—more powerful and radiant than the singularity that had birthed the universe—and the hero stumbled and fell on his rump, shielding his eyes from the all-consuming light.

He screamed fearfully—for he did not understand; for the first time in eons he did not and could not.

He squinted when he sensed the light finally subsiding; through double vision, he saw…

_A woman?_

He could not comprehend what was going on…was he losing his wits? Was the afterlife one of madness?

"Do not fear, great Thanos," the woman spoke in a soothing voice, "I mean you no harm."

His vision finally coming back into focus, he saw her for what she was.

The being who stood before him in the preternatural nothingness was a female titan; tall and lithe with ivory white skin and dressed in a resplendent robe made of ever shifting colors, her very skin radiating a soft glow, her eyes reflecting the amorphous changes of her robe.

She was smiling at him, holding out her hand in what was unmistakably a gesture of assistance. Still unsure, he took her hand anyway and she helped him up with strength unexpected for someone of her stature.

Upon getting to his feet, Thanos immediately wished he were clothed—and immediately, he was. A long toga-like tunic, not unlike the woman's own, manifested on him. Moreover, it was exactly like the ones he had possessed when his homeworld was not yet the desiccated corpse it had become.

That was the least peculiar of the events that had since transpired.

"Come with me," she smiled softly, offering her hand again to him.

_Come where?_ Thanos thought of the expanse of nothingness while taking her hand.

As soon as he had, lights began to blink softly into existence all about him and his strange new companion.

She led him through the void which continued to fill up with sourceless, luminescent globes and it soon dawned on the great titan what they truly were.

_Stars_, his disbelieving thoughts spoke, _stars…_

The cosmos had come to life about them.

"Where are we?" he could not help but ask while they walked through the vast scintillating expanse of space.

"'Where' is relative," she smiled, with an expression that was at once comforting as it was amused, "where would you say are we?"

He could not answer. He could not even think.

Side-by-side they strode through the beautiful infinite, and Thanos became aware that though he could see all of creation, he was still outside all of it.

Imperceptible he was, finding out when he observed the bright stars and all that orbited around them passing through him.

Already feeling humbled by the glory of the universe he had attempted to save, he could not stop a tinge of melancholy when he reached out to the star system he recognized no matter from which point of the universe he found himself in.

Titan's sun was but a tiny speck between his hands.

A small spot of luminescence amongst countless others wandering through the endless expanse.

As he held his world's sun with a tenderness he might have to a newborn child, he felt a warm hand touch comfortingly on his shoulder.

"Yours was a beautiful world, mighty Thanos," the woman said, "what befell was a true tragedy…"

He never looked at her, his focus only on the dead worlds that orbited the star that remained as the last mute testament to what was once his home.

"They did not listen…they could _not._"

The words were ashes on his tongue.

_Ashes_…

Thanos closed his eyes and felt warm tears run down his face.

_My world…_

Ah, how he mourned!

_My people…_

At once, his mind's eye returned to his being cast out for his supposedly insane suggestion to cull half to save the rest.

He tried to grasp that tiny spark of light; a childish gesture to keep Titan's sun as a memento in this…_existence_—for no other words can describe what he was then—and only saw the star system pass through his hand like the ghost that he thought he was.

"What is this…" he choked out, eyes still closed in mounting despair and madness, "why—am I still even alive?"

"People believe," the woman said enigmatically, "in what they choose to believe."

* * *

His eyes shot open. He was so tired. He was so confused.

But most of all, he felt _furious_, and he could not even say why.

"What _should _I believe, then?" he spat venomously with his back to the woman, "I last recall the Asgardian fool going for my head."

"Men usually die from that. I would know," he added acidly.

The woman's serene smile disappeared, "So you believe you are dead."

It was not meant as a question.

"I _should_ be."

His anger blazed, and it seemed that the ephemeral lights of the universe grew fainter as if embers from a dying fire.

In a flash, an impossibly powerful fist closed around the neck of the woman, which unlike the rest of the universe felt as solid and as _real_ as anything can possibly be.

_At last, _the demon of his troubled mind smiled, _something that needs no explanation._

His lips peeled away into a malevolent snarl—how he wanted to _frighten _her, to make her _feel_ the madness devouring him!

He had looked a countless many being in the eyes mere moments before he had destroyed them utterly. Nearly all had looked back into his with fear flashing forth and the notable few who did not he could count with one hand.

But hers was something else entirely.

Forget fear.

Forget loathing.

The great Titan prided himself in being an excellent judge of character—he _had _to be in order to succeed in his quest—and unless he was much mistaken, this woman…

This visage of the tools he had used to bring back the rightful order of the universe…

A soft, resigned smile; not hands clawing to break free of his herculean grasp.

Sympathy met his rage.

At once he felt ashamed, and yet he kept his hold on that graceful neck, a part of him still unwilling, still railing against the whole confounding business of it all.

It had been so easy to be strong in the face of adversity. He had endured and overcome countless rivals in his quest to fulfill the rightful order and only _once_ before had his resolve truly been shaken.

His daughter's broken body flashed before his eyes and at once the titan Thanos felt pain manifest as icy fingers about his heart.

The hand that stood poised and ready to end the woman's existence began to shake, try as he might to stop it.

"I…_destroyed_ you!"

The words came out choked, like a petulant child trying to explain a misdeed to his parent. Nowhere near the conviction that came to him so effortlessly in times past.

"Yes. You destroyed me," the woman said calmly, "and in doing so, created me."

As if his body had found a will of its own, it took the forlorn hero a while to realize that he had released the woman from his grasp and even longer to realize that he had fallen to his knees on what served as ethereal ground.

Words failed him, and he felt frustrated, pained tears, as ephemeral as they were purposeful, flowing down his cheeks into eternity.

A warm hand stroked his cheek.

It felt so real. It _all _felt so real.

"Great Thanos," his companion said, still with that sympathetic smile on her radiant face, "please. Lay down."

He did not know and could no longer care so he simply did as told.

Worldlessly, she lay down beside him, and for a while, there was nary a word spoken between the two beings who lay within the firmament, seemingly content to ponder at the countless scintillating orbs that had once more begun to shine as bright as ever.

"You wonder," she said, finally breaking the silence, "why are you here?"

"Yes."

"You brought yourself, here," she breathed, seemingly watching the ebb and flow of galaxies through the intangible frame of spacetime, "Even answering the question of 'now'…is your choice."

"I once had that power," Thanos whispered sadly, "I cannot understand anymore."

"There are some truths that none can understand."

* * *

The stars blinked away from existence to be replaced a panoramic view of all the events that had led to his being there…and those that would come after.

He relieved the moment of his ultimate triumph—that fragment of time where the rightful order was imposed upon what he had judged as a finite universe stricken by the malady of infinite consumption.

They both beheld his own death again by the hand of the vengeful Asgardian.

And then a vision that was totally alien to him—of _himself_ waging war on would-be heroes long after he should have been dead. Those inconsequential beings that had somehow become the bane of his existence, those proverbial thorns in his side.

Why was _he_ still alive then? Why were _they_ still alive at all?

They fought on like those who no longer had anything to lose, and just so.

Thanos heart was a pounding drum in his chest seeing his army and even himself falter—

Ah! He would not be denied!

Once more he witnessed the six Infinity Stones in his possession and he, for a most fleeting moment of time had nearly restored justice to all that is—

But it was not to be. _He _was not to be.

Physical pain could not compare to his witnessing this monumental failure.

Deep down he knew that this vision was not a question of 'what?', but 'when?'"

His soul was crushed knowing that he would fail. _Inevitably_ so. He did not need to ask.

He simply _knew._

"Why is there any truth at all?" his voice bleak, his heart empty, his eyes falling onto his empty left hand that reached out to the stars which had returned to replace his eventual and final fall from grace.

"Faith, Thanos, " the woman by his side spoke serenely, "you do not have to understand. You simply believe."

"'Tis not fair," the great Titan said wistfully into a universe he now detested but could do nothing against, "my labors have cost me _everything_."

"Yes."

"I have achieved _nothing_, " His tone echoing the emptiness of his heart.

"No. Existence itself owes you an insurmountable debt. 'Tis unfortunate that yours is a sacrifice that none but the greatest can comprehend. You said it yourself."

Without willing it, her words were a balm to his grieving soul. Without even thinking, he instantly understood what she had meant.

_"The hardest of choices…require the strongest of wills."_ His words rang through the stars.

He glanced towards his companion and saw that she continued to look aimlessly into the endless.

Was she dumbstruck for once? Was this to be his existence forever?

He breathed and let go of his futile rage.

"Thanos…" she spoke softly after that short silence, "what do we and the stars have in common?"

"I thought I knew."

Still lying on their backs on the invisible firmament, the woman reached out seemingly to cradle an unusually small and dim star in her palm.

"A white dwarf," Thanos said dismissively after noticing what she had done, "a cinder of what was once a sun, mayhaps more."

"Indeed. Here it is, in the last throes of its long, long life. Do you understand now?"

He sighed, no longer looking at the tiny corpse-sun she held as if a curio.

"Everything dies."

She brought her hand away from the white dwarf, and once again silence rang throughout the cosmos.

"I _am _dead," he declared, eyes closed as if in repose.

"Yes. But it is _not_ the end," the woman replied as she sat up, "not for you, nor for myself."

"I suppose I must ask the obvious," he piped while still lying supine on the firmament, "_who_ are you?"

"I am everything. I am nothing. I am _you_," the woman spoke, "I am them. I am everyone and I am no one."

"I am all that lives," she added, "and I am all who have passed on."

"I simply…_am, _just as you simply _are._"

Thanos kept silent and still for a moment, seemingly pondering the gravity of his companion's revelation.

"Why me? Why tell me all this? Who am I to you?"

"Because _you_ are the only one who has earned the right."

Speechless once more, the forlorn hero instead breathed out into the void. If only he could let his thoughts go as easily as he could his breath.

_How am I even breathing?_

"I am dead, but 'tis not the end for me, you said," he finally spoke, "how is death not the end?"

She was still sitting upright beside him when she waved a hand across the cosmos.

The stars once again disappeared and they were again surrounded by preternatural darkness.

Thanos got up; he did not understand, but his melancholy only worsened seeing the infinite lights turn into infinite night.

A soft, warm hand touched his chest and prevented him from getting to his feet.

"Watch," she whispered.

Softly did they appear into existence.

Effervescent, coming slowly and softly into being as if spectres from a fog.

His first thoughts he chided himself for, for they seemed childish.

_Bubbles? _

Yet that was what they appeared to be.

Scintillating bubbles filled with what appeared to be soft, sourceless lights within, appearing all about them.

So innocent and innocuous that Thanos dared not touch them for fear of them breaking.

"Do you see now, Thanos?" she said, the six colors of infinity glowing softly in her eyes, "do you understand now the fruits of _our_ labor?"

The lost hero blinked.

_Our?_

And then his mind flashed through the cosmos—

He witnessed everything there is_, _was and, will _be_.

He witnessed all that could have been and all that never came to pass.

He had become _one_.

With creation.

With destruction.

With all that lies between.

It was the most glorious spectacle he had ever witnessed. Glory beyond anything anyone had ever witnessed.

Glory and happiness beyond reason.

"Your will," her voice proclaimed proudly, "my hands."

Everything was possible. All because of _his_ choice.

_Choice…_ He understood then why in order to win, he had to lose.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

"Perfectly balanced," she whispered, coming into being by his side and taking his hand into hers.

At last, Thanos smiled for the first time, rising as equals, ready to traverse beyond infinity.

As if lovers on their wedding day, they spoke the words as one.

"As all things should be."


End file.
